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Friday, November 12, 2010

Friday Flashback: Diabetes in the 90's

The BF and I met up with some of his friends from work at the JDRF walk last month. Without the fluff, here is the jist of the conversation:

Lady: "How long have you been diagnosed?"Nerdy April: "11 years."Lady: "Wow!! You must have seen a lot of changes in your lifetime!!"Nerdy April to The BF: "I know I'm wearing my fashion faux pax sweatpants, but do I look THAT old?!?!"

I'm not sure how old the "lady" thought I was (good Lord, I'm only 23!), but she was right, I have seen a lot of changes in what I will call my "Diabetes Lifetime." I thought it might be fun to revisit my old Diabetes regime during this Friday Flashback.

As you can see it was extremely rigid. The meal and snack times were not a joke. The specific amount of carbs listed had to be consumed at the associated time plus or minus 30 minutes. I measured out my cereal until my food-measuring eye was trained and my mom set up my meals to include the exact amount of carbs plus or minus 5. It was a lot easier to go "low" back then because the insulin administered in the morning (NPH) lasted 12 hours. If you didn't want an afternoon snack....TOO BAD, you risked going low if it was not consumed. If you wanted a smiley face pancake at IHOP with orange juice and tons of syrup...TOO BAD, that was waaaayyy more than the 45 carbs allotted. If your friend wanted to have her birthday dinner at Chuckee Cheese's at 7pm....TOO BAD, you had to eat dinner at 5:00pm.

There was a lot of "Too bads" and "Eat this" and "How many carbs was that?" There was a lot of scheduling, measuring and logging. And there were a lot of nights when I would hate looking the syringe in the eye and wish I had never heard the word "Diabetes". It was traumatic and stressful and regimented. And all of this flashbacking makes me so thankful for the insulin pump and my now well-trained measuring eye [more on the SWAG Bolusing later].

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Disclaimer

I'm a rocket scientist...I diagnose and treat rocket problems, not medical ones!!! Sometimes I blog about my personal experiences as a person living with Type 1 Diabetes, however, this is not to be taken as medical advice.

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